anna's archive anna's archive anna's archive

April 2017

April 19 2017

Gracie Henderson, from New Caney, Texas, didn't have a plunger when her
toilet became clogged. Rather than resort to ringing a plumber, she
tried to clear the blockage by hand. She hadn't removed her
wristwatch first, however, and soon resorted to ringing the emergency
services to report that it had caught on something in the bowels of
the toilet. While her neighbours looked on and videoed the proceedings,
firefighters removed the commode from its fixings and carried it
outside. A little force from a sledgehammer then freed Henderson's
arm.

In other clog-related news from Texas, blockage of a municipal sewer
pipe in Austin led city workers to the door of Juan Wang, 49, and
husband Joseph Emery, 54. The cause of the problem was flushing used
condoms down the toilet. No, things aren't that much bigger in Texas
- the quantity was what made the difference. The business that
operated from that address, Jade Massage Therapy, was kept under
monitoring, and a raid six weeks later resulted in Wang and another
woman being caught mid-hand-job. Wang and Emery were arrested
for managing a 'prostitution enterprise that used two or more
prostitutes' and engaging in money-laundering.

Nick Mead restores military vehicles. When he saw an eBay listing for a
Chinese Type 69 tank, he asked whether his business, Tanks A Lot,
could have it in exchange for two other retired military items: a
British Army truck and an Abbot self-propelled howitzer. The seller
agreed to the trade, and Tanks A Lot soon began work on the Type 69, a
unit formerly used by Iraq's army. It wasn't long before mechanic
Todd Chamberlain alerted Mead that there might be weapons in one of
the fuel tanks, so the two decided to document this for the
authorities. As a result, they have a video of the restorers pulling
five foreign objects from the fuel tank: about 32 kilos of gold bars.
It is unclear what will come of the gold, which is thought to have
entered the fuel tank during the invasion of Kuwait.

An eight-year-old Ohio boy wanted a cheeseburger at McDonald's while
his parents were sleeping, and he knew how to get it. He began by
searching the Web for information on how to drive. After watching
tutorial videos, he stretched onto his tip-toes to snatch his father's
car keys and drove to the fast-food restaurant, about 2.5 kilometres
away. When he arrived there with money from his piggy bank, the
drive-through workers assumed that his parents were in the back of the
vehicle. The only passenger was his four-year-old sister, who had
wanted her own cheeseburger.
East Palestine police officer Jacob Koehler described worrying
that he would receive reports of damaged mailboxes etc. after the
youth's trip. In contrast, witnesses report that the boy had
appropriately waited for traffic to pass before turning, stopped for
red lights, and not caused any damage. After he apologised, the two
children were allowed to eat their food while officers waited for their
grandparents to collect them.

In considerably more trouble with the police is Pacheco Bustamante.
Driving a nearly police-issue-looking Ford Crown Victoria, he turned
on a siren and pulled a motorist onto the motorway shoulder in
Florida. The vehicle he chose was driven by a detective, who was able
to detect rather swiftly that the 46-year-old Bustamante wasn't a
traffic cop and that Bustamante's 'service weapon' was a BB gun. When
busted, Bustamante mentioned that he has played traffic cop before.

When Montana's Gilbert Kalonde was applying for a state fishing licence, the
Wal-Mart worker handling the transaction asked him to state his
profession. Kalonde responded by showing the worker his Montana State
University identification card. When the licence was issued, it did
not list him 'Assistant Professor of Technology Education'; his
occupation had been recorded as toilet-cleaner.
Describing this database entry as exposing him to 'hatred, contempt,
ridicule', Kalonde has filed a libel suit for unspecified damages in
Gallatin County District Court.

After getting to know each other via an online dating site, an Arizona
woman and Phoenix's David Harlow met for a real-life first date at a
resort in his hometown. As the evening wore on, the woman excused
herself to use the toilet, asking the 38-year-old Harlow to watch her
belongings. It appears that he indeed never let her handbag out of
his sight: he took it with him and headed for a casino. He also
attempted to withdraw money at various banks. Harlow is now in jail
on various charges.

Cheshire's Harvey Kenyon-Cairns was summoned to the US embassy for an
interview before a planned trip to Florida. This was because of the
response to 'Do you seek to engage in or have you ever engaged in
terrorist activities, espionage, sabotage, or genocide?' on his
visa-waiver form: 'Yes'.
Kenyon-Cairns didn't make the mistake himself - at three months of
age, he left grandfather Paul Kenyon to fill in the answers. In
addition to a 10-hour round trip to the embassy, the mistake caused
delays in issuing the baby's visa. Kenyon paid the equivalent of
4,000 euros to arrange new flights and accommodation for Kenyon-Cairns
and his parents. Things could have gone worse, though: Kenyon had
considered dressing the tyke in an orange jumpsuit and cracking
jokes at the interview.

Responding to a bomb scare at Grande Prairie's Bell Tower Plaza
shopping centre, at least eight Royal Canadian Mounted Police officers
with long guns converged on the site, where the cause of alarm - a
gas-mask-wearing man with what appeared to be explosives on his back -
then entered Hoa Hugnh's shop. Hugnh was serving the armoured visitor
when officers rang and asked him to evacuate the premises. They then
confronted the man, who turned out to be a costumed devotee of the
video game Fallout. The 'bomb' was a set of silver-painted Pringles
tubes. Hugnh explained that the cosplayer had entered Lynn's
Alterations simply to get measurements taken. The Alberta man
responsible for the fuss was released from custody without criminal
charges.

Mechanics who were working on Alex Tom's car in connection with a
recall found an iPhone in the airbag compartment. This locked device
identified itself via USB as 'Sully's iPhone', and a friend's advice
on how to view recent notifications led him to the dating app Coffee
Meets Bagel. This information proved to be enough: Coffee Meets Bagel
customer-service staff tracked down Sully, who had participated in
rafting trips with Tom in 2014 in an area with little cellular
coverage. The device had been placed in flight mode and left in Tom's
(apparently holey) glovebox. Sully now knows that he didn't lose the
phone on the river, and he can return it to its actual owner, his
brother.